JOEL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Listened to Mouth For war while making the riff 124363245643245

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-34, 43-50 and 60-67, and 3 more places -- 22.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
212
LENGTH
5:51
DIFFICULTY
83/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
LISTENED TO MOUTH FOR WAR WHILE MAKING THE RIFF 124363245643245 · BAR 28

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 74 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 83 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 77 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  4. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 77, 93, 109, 124 and 140 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Listened to Mouth For war while making the riff 124363245643245 use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 140 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-34, 43-50, 60-67 and 86-93, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Listened to Mouth For war while making the riff 124363245643245 hard?

74 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 83 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 219 BARS ANALYSED